Battle of Anthracite
The Battle of Anthracite was a battle in the Flettan Rebellion of 1106. It was fought between rebels under Greg West and portions of three divisions from the Army of Regina under Richard Zimmerman, Sean Rosen and Glenn Flaker. It took place on 2 May 1107. Prelude The rebellion had begun in October 1106 when reactionary Xethos Stamnoudus commandeered a column of skirmishers and SRB leader Nataliya Sytnikov began taking hostile actions against R15 Franklin Vincent's military outposts and loyal villages. Long time opposition leaders Dave DeGrenier and Greg West in the east immediately formed their own armies and by March, the rebel armies combined for nearly 140,000 troops. Stamnoudus had taken over marshal duties and used DeGrenier and West to plug two passes in the northern Rockies while he completely destroyed four columns that would have made up the Army of Tuscaloosa near the Sudamini'li Drubyetski Montangora Geto by mid-April. Vincent's forces responded by trying to move through different passes. After Erik Tresler's division was stopped cold by DeGrenier at Goldcreek, the Army of Regina decided to press further north still toward Anthracite, where West was stationed. On 20 April, kataskopi under veteran cavalier Rick Duthie began to attempt to scout West's position, but was screened heavily by Jason Horsley and could not hunt down West's exact position. Horsley, an unknown talent at this point, had the most sizeable cavalry contingent amongst the rebellion, but was still outnumbered by Duthie's division. Where DeGrenier had been unwilling to engage Ross Martin's superior numbers at Goldcreek, Horsley repeatedly bore down on Duthie's lightly armed scout cavalry and forced them to withdraw. Duthie faced the same problem as Martin in that he had to provide support for the entire Army of Regina as well as for the cavalry-less Army of Appalachia and did not want to risk taking casualties in an indecisive engagement. Word of Goldcreek reached the commanders within the Army of Regina on 24 April. At this point, none of the maix est regine'al commanders knew how many rebels there were, but that DeGrenier had been receiving reinforcements throughout the battle. Thus they were unaware that DeGrenier had lost a third of his army and that another similar push would be excruciatingly painful for him. That day, a war council amongst the leaders of the Army of Regina decided to try their luck in the northern pass. Though there was a pass even further north, it was a treacherous road next to a lake, which posed a risk nobody wanted to take. Still, the Army of Regina consolidated nearby it in the town of Windermere. On 25 April, two divisions under Max Grafton and Lance Howarth feinted toward the extreme north pass, heavily screened by Duthie. Horsley was unable to get close enough to assess their numbers as Duthie had moved his only regiment of heavy cavalry forward to deal with Horsley's kataskopi. However, West did not move, as his position allowed him to be able to comfortably beat Grafton and Howarth to Cascyst if they indeed advanced around him. On 26 April, the remaining three infantry divisions under Richard Zimmerman, Sean Rosen and Glenn Flaker began a forced march to the pass of Anthracite. This was also heavily screened, with Duthie recalling his cuirassiers to accompany this new party. On 1 May, the forwardmost division, Zimmerman's, came within eyesight of West's fortifications and the Army of Regina made camp about 14 kilometres away. Armies West was hopelessly outnumbered, as per usual for the rebels, and had to rely on the confines of yet another narrow pass to win. Under Jason Horsley were 7,500 cavalrymen that would not be at all useful in the mountains. His infantry, he split into three divisions and gave one to Herakleios Metaxas and another to Dan Anthony. Each of these contained 2,000 windlass-armed skirmishers, 3,000 pikemen and 5,000 swordsmen. The troops he kept for himself made up his retinue from Vincent's invasion of Sceafarice and were more experienced than much that either side had to offer as well as good mail armour. West's secret weapon, however, came in the form of Ross Jackson. Jackson had spent years learning the art of siegecraft and artillery and when West gave him the opportunity to build artillery, he jumped at the chance. Having more time and resources than Guzalak had at Boron, Jackson had together eleven ballistae and six polyboloi and forty men to load and fire them. This gave West a total of 37,650 troops. The maix est regine'al troops under Zimmerman, Rosen and Flaker had numbers. A standard Regina army composition would have included two regiments of elite swordsmen, four regiments of main line swordsmen, two regiments of pikemen and two regiments of skirmishers. This, the divisions of the Army of Regina had almost achieved, but they lacked the elite swordsmen and the pikes were replaced with spears. Their only advantage with this composition was that the spearmen had three spears each with two to throw and it was easier on Vincent's ailing budget. They did all have full 45,000-strong divisions and two regiments of Duthie's cavalry in reserve for a total of 144,000. Once again, the terrain looked to even up very unbalanced numbers. West's sandbag line extended 2,500 metres. On one flank was a river parallel with the sandbag line and on the other a mountain peak. The river would have to be crossed twice if any of the Regina soldiers intended to turn West's flank and, given the freezing water and Jackson's ballistae overlooking crossings, were not likely to do so. Battle At 09:00, Rosen's division began to trade skirmish fire with the rebels while his infantry formed ranks. Both armies used the same crossbow, so it was West's superior position winning the fight; Jackson was not firing in order to save ammunition. At 09:25, Zimmerman's and Flaker's skirmishers came forward to exchange their own fire. By 10:30, Rosen could see his skirmishers were not inflicting enough damage to justify the number of casualties that they were taking and withdrew them. At 10:45, Rosen's 36,000 infantry advanced. To accommodate for the narrow pass, he had to form his troops nine ranks deep. His spears made up the centre with three regiments of swords on either flank. When his troops moved to within 200 metres, Jackson's artillery opened fire all at once. Five seconds later, West, Metexes and Anthony fired a volley on Rosen's troops. Instantly, they began to waver under the shock though they had not lost that many men. As they picked their way through the wounded, the polyboloi hammered away at them while the ballistae and crossbowmen reloaded and unleashed another set of devastating volleys. As they drew closer, the weak polyboloi had an easier time punching through their gambesons and tunics. Thinking quickly, Flaker rushed his troops forward to support Rosen as Rosen's troops were on the verge of breaking. Rosen's troops now had nowhere to run and were pushed forward toward West's troops. Jackson this and changed his focus to Flaker's first line of troops with his ballistae as his polyboloi continued to tear apart Rosen's front rank. At 11:10, Rosen's troops finally reached the wall. His spearmen managed to kill a couple of Metaxas's troops but Rosen's entire division broke before they could accomplish anything. Zimmerman chose this time to advance his infantry, expecting Flaker to be absorbing all of the fire. Jackson had other ideas and once Flaker had gotten his troops into melee on the sandbags, he turned his entire battery onto Zimmerman's approaching troops. In the centre, Flaker was dealing damage to Metaxas but getting hammered on the flanks. He had backup from Zimmerman by 11:35, but he was not making inroads on West's army. Meanwhile, the missiles coming from West's army were racking up kills rapidly. Rosen rallied his skirmishers, coupled them with Flaker's and Zimmerman's and attempted to shoot down the artillery crew but instead incurred the wrath of the enemy crossbowmen and broke. The remaining infantry soon followed suit and at 12:40, the battle was over in time for lunch. Horsley's Charge As the Reginan line broke, Duthie had to keep his cavalry off to the side to allow the infantry a clear path out of the valley and back to Windermere. In his position, the tail end of the routing column was not protected. Horsley saw this and moved his cavalry forward through the infantry ranks, bowling over a number of allies in the process. Once clear of the friendly sandbags, his hussars began cutting down routing troops en masse. Duthie attempted to form up his cavalry to counter, but Horsley was able to get a clean charge into Duthie's stationary hussars and begin cutting down cavalrymen at a rapid rate. West responded to Horsley's initiative by sending his pikes over the sandbags to support him and Anthony soon followed suit while Metaxas dealt with having had his troops flattened. Duthie was forced to withdraw or risk having his entire force skewered on the pikes, but Horsley kept on him as he withdrew, inflicting dozens of further casualties. Rosen attempted to rally a few routing spearman to help extricate Duthie, but could only put about a hundred troops together to make a fighting retreat. By the time Duthie's cavalry was in full flight, he'd lost well over half of one regiment and done little damage in return. He had bought his infantry time and worn down Horsley's cavalry enough to allow his infantry to make good their escape for the most part. Horsley kept at it, however, and had cut down a number of stragglers by night fall and forced the retreating divisions to make a gruelling all-night march to stay ahead of him instead of reforming. This was also forcing the less severely wounded amongst the divisions lag behind to be cut down and thus kept out of action permanently. Horsley finally quit chasing them at 01:00 the morning after the battle to rest his troops. Aftermath Once again, the rebellion had scored another decisive tactical victory. West had traded 1630 serious casualties (796 dead and 834 wounded) while inflicting massive damage on the Army of Regina, which sustained 78,488 serious casualties (46,832 dead and 31,656 wounded). A total of 2,896 of Duthie's cavalry were killed in the battle, which was not a massive dent but one large enough to frighten Duthie and Martin to the south. Strategically, the battle was the decisive victory the rebels needed after the near run at Goldcreek. The Army of Regina was lucky in that they suffered no desertion after the battle, though this was perhaps more to do with the soldiers' fear of Horsley than because of morale. Despite this, 55% of the troops that had engaged were killed or wounded in the battle, which made up nearly 30% of their army. West, meanwhile, had lost 4% of his army and hadn't lost any of his artillery. West now had a chance to seize the initiative and crush the Army of Regina while their morale was weak and the Army of Appalachia was still out of reinforcement range. Trusting the villagers in Anthracite to clean up the mess and keep as many wounded soldiers alive as they could, he began to march toward Windermere at 15:00 on the 2nd, while Horsley was still chasing the routing troops. At this point, the rebels were winning the war comfortably. They had won four battles out of four and knocked 22.0% of Vincent's total force out of action and had only lost 19.1% (16.5% Potuzu) in return.